Lady Bird

ARTICLES ABOUT LADY BIRD BY DATE - PAGE 3

The Texas landscape is awash in blues in April, as bluebonnets ripple across fields and highway roadsides, their white tips shimmering in the springtime sun. "This is the palette I grew up with," says Lady Bird Johnson, affectionately known as the nation's "first lady of wildflowers." "Never could we ask more of Mother Nature." Her voice low and modulated, Johnson adds with an intensity, "We must safeguard our wildflowers. We must research, show our people how to cultivate them and demonstrate how to plant them.

On Nov. 17, 1558, Elizabeth I ascended to the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary I. In 1800 Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol. In 1869 the Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1917 sculptor Auguste Rodin died. In 1934 Lyndon B. Johnson married Claudia (Lady Bird) Taylor. In 1969 strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union began in Helsinki, Finland.

The simple cardboard visors that were to become stock-car racing collectors` items appeared in 1965. Lyndon Johnson then was in the White House, where he lived with wife Lady Bird. Meanwhile, another Johnson was presiding in NASCAR racing that year. An inscription on the visors being distributed free before the fall event at North Wilkesboro Speedway, the driver's home track, honored him in a lighthearted way. The wording: "Junior Bird Is My Favorite Johnson." A wire-service photograph of grinning fans wearing the visors got big play in newspapers across the country.

On Nov. 17, 1558, Elizabeth I ascended to the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary I. In 1800, Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building. In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. In 1917, sculptor Auguste Rodin died. In 1926, the Chicago Black Hawks played their first hockey game, beating the Toronto St. Patricks 4-1. In 1934, Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as Lady Bird.

By Reviewed by Janice Harayda, the Tribune`s audio reviewer and author of ``The Joy of Being Single.`` | September 21, 1986

Alamo House: Women Without Men, Men Without Brains By Sarah Bird Norton, 317 pages, $15.95 American popular culture has begun to acquire a sharp Texas accent. This trend shows up not just in the popularity of "Dallas" and Tex-Mex cooking but in the success of novels such as James Michener's "Texas," plays such as "Greater Tuna" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," and even nightclubs such as New York's Lone Star Cafe. Suddenly, it seems, everybody has remembered the Alamo.